The first requisite for a good night’s sleep is a feeling of security. We need to feel that some power greater than ourselves will take care of us until morning. Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the Great West Riding Asylum, stressed that point in an address before the British Medical Association. He said: “One of the best sleep-producing agents which my years of practice have revealed to me-is prayer. I say this purely as a medical man. The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.”
“Let God-and let go.”
Jeanette MacDonald told me that when she was depressed and worried and had difficulty in going to sleep, she could always get “a feeling of security” by repeating Psalm XXII: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. …”
But if you are not religious, and have to do things the hard way, then learn to relax by physical measures. Dr. David Harold Fink, who wrote Release from Nervous Tension, says that the best way to do this is to talk to your body. According to Dr. Fink, words are the key to all kinds of hypnosis; and when you consistently can’t sleep, it is because you have talked yourself into a case of insomnia. The way to undo this is to dehypnotise yourself-and you can do it by saying to the muscles of your body: “Let go, let go-loosen up and relax.” We already know that the mind and nerves can’t relax while the muscles are tense-so if we want to go to sleep, we start with the muscles. Dr. Fink recommends-and it works out in practice-that we put a pillow under the knees to ease the tension on the legs, and that we tuck small pillows under the arms for the very same reason. Then, by telling the jaw to relax, the eyes, the arms, and the legs, we finally drop off to sleep before we know what has hit us. I’ve tried it-I know. If you have trouble sleeping, get hold of Dr. Fink’s book, Release from Nervous Tension, which I have mentioned earlier It is the only book I know of that is both lively reading and a cure for insomnia.
One of the best cures for insomnia is making yourself physically tired by gardening, swimming, tennis, golf, skiing, or by just plain physically exhausting work. That is what Theodore Dreiser did. When he was a struggling young author, he was worried about insomnia, so he got a job working as a section hand on the New York Central Railway; and after a day of driving spikes and shoveling gravel, he was so exhausted that he could hardly stay awake long enough to eat.
If we get tired enough, nature will force us to sleep even while we are walking. To illustrate, when I was thirteen years old, my father shipped a car-load of fat hogs to Saint Joe, Missouri. Since he got two free railroad passes, he took me along with him. Up until that time, I had never been in a town of more than four thousand. When I landed in Saint Joe-a city of sixty thousand-I was agog with excitement. I saw skyscrapers six storeys high and-wonder of wonders-I saw a street-car. I can close my eyes now and still see and hear that street-car. After the most thrilling and exciting day of my life, Father and I took a train back to Ravenwood, Missouri. Arriving there at two o’clock in the morning, we had to walk four miles home to the farm. And here is the point of the story: I was so exhausted that I slept and dreamed as I walked. I have often slept while riding horseback. And I am alive to tell it!
When men are completely exhausted they sleep right through the thunder and horror and danger of war. Dr. Foster Kennedy, the famous neurologist, tells me that during the retreat of the Fifth British Army in 1918, he saw soldiers so exhausted that they fell on the ground where they were and fell into a sleep as sound as a coma. They didn’t even wake up when he raised their eyelids with his fingers. And he says he noticed that invariably the pupils of the eyes were rolled upward in the sockets. “After that,” says Dr. Kennedy, “when I had trouble sleeping, I would practice rolling up my eyeballs into this position, and I found that in a few seconds I would begin to yawn and feel sleepy. It was an automatic reflex over which I had no control.”
No man ever committed suicide by refusing to sleep and no one ever will. Nature would force a man to sleep in spite of all his will power. Nature will let us go without food or water far longer than she will let us go without sleep.
Speaking of suicide reminds me of a case that Dr. Henry C. Link describes in his book, The Rediscovery of Man. Dr. Link is vice-president of The Psychological Corporation and he interviews many people who are worried and depressed. In his chapter “On Overcoming Fears and Worries”, he tells about a patient who wanted to commit suicide. Dr. Link knew arguing would only make the matter worse, so he said to this man: “If you are going to commit suicide anyway, you might at least do it in a heroic fashion. Run around the block until you drop dead.”
He tried it, not once but several times, and each time felt better, in his mind if not in his muscles. By the third night he had achieved what Dr. Link intended in the first place-he was so physically tired (and physically relaxed) that he slept like a log. Later he joined an athletic club and began to compete in competitive sports. Soon he was feeling so good he wanted to live for ever!
So, to keep from worrying about insomnia, here are five rules:
1. If yon can’t sleep, do what Samuel Untermyer did. Get up and work or read until you do feel sleepy.
2. Remember that no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. Worrying about insomnia usually causes far more damage than sleeplessness.
3. Try prayer-or repeat Psalm XXIII, as Jeanette MacDonald does.
4. Relax your body. Read the book “Release from Nervous Tension.”
5. Exercise. Get yourself so physically tired you can’t stay awake.
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Part Seven In A Nutshell – Six Ways To Prevent Fatigue And Worry And Keep Your Energy And Spirits High
RULE 1: Rest before you get tired. RULE 2: Learn to relax at your work.
RULE 3: If you are a housewife, protect your health and appearance by relaxing at home
RULE 4: Apply these four good working habits
a. Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand.
b. Do things in the order of their importance.
c. When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts necessary to make a decision.
d. Learn to organise, deputise, and supervise.
RULE 5: To prevent worry and fatigue, put enthusiasm into your work.
RULE 6: Remember, no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. It is worrying about insomnia that does the damage-not the insomnia
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Part Eight – How To Find The Kind Of Work In Which You May Be Happy And Successful
Chapter 29: The Major Decision Of Tour Life
(This chapter is addressed to young men and women who haven’t yet found the work they want to do. If you are in that category, reading this chapter may have a profound effect upon the remainder of your life.)
If you are under eighteen, you will probably soon be called upon to make the two most important decisions of your life- decisions that will profoundly alter all the days of your years: decisions that may have far-reaching effects upon your happiness, your income, your health; decisions that may make or break you.
What are these two tremendous decisions?
First: How are you going to make a living? Are you going to be a farmer, a mail carrier, a chemist, a forest ranger, a stenographer, a horse dealer, a college professor, or are you going to run a hamburger stand ?
Second: Whom are you going to select to be the father or mother of your children?
Both of those great decisions are frequently gambles. “Every boy,” says Harry Emerson Fosdick in his book, The Power to See It Through, “every boy is a gambler when he chooses a vocation. He must stake his life on it.”
How can you reduce the gamble in selecting a vocation? Read on; we will tell you as best we can. First, try, if possible, to find work that you enjoy. I once asked David M. Goodrich, Chairman of the Board, B. F. Goodrich Company-tyre manufacturers-what he considered the first requisite of success in business, and he replied: “Having a good time at your work. If you enjoy what you are doing,” he said, “you may work long hours, but it won’t seem like work at all. It will seem like play.”
Edison was a good example of that. Edison-the unschooled newsboy who grew up to transform the industrial life of America-Edison, the man who often ate and slept in his laboratory and toiled there for eighteen hours a day. But it wasn’t toil to him. “I never did a day’s work in my life,” he exclaimed. “It was all fun.”
No wonder he succeeded!
I once heard Charles Schwab say much the same thing. He said: “A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.”
But how can you have enthusiasm for a job when you haven’t the foggiest idea of what you want to do? “The greatest tragedy I know of,” said Mrs. Edna Kerr, who once hired thousands of employees for the Dupont Company, and is now assistant director of industrial relations for the American Home Products Company-“The greatest tragedy I know of,” she told me, “is that so many young people never discover what they really want to do. I think no one else is so much to be pitied as the person who gets nothing at all out of his work but his pay.” Mrs. Kerr reports that even college graduates come to her and say: “I have a B.A. degree from Dartmouth [or an M.A. from Cornell]. Have you some kind of work I can do for your firm?” They don’t know themselves what they are able to do, or even what they would like to do. Is it any wonder that so many men and women who start out in life with competent minds and rosy dreams end up at forty in utter frustration and even with a nervous breakdown? In fact, finding the right occupation is important even for your health. When Dr. Raymond Pearl, of Johns Hopkins, made a study, together with some insurance companies, to discover the factors that make for a long life, he placed “the right occupation” high on the list. He might have said, with Thomas Carlyle: “Blessed is the man who has found his work. Let him ask no other blessedness.”